This paper assesses the predictive power of variables that measure market tightness, such as seller's bargaining power and sale probabilities, on future home prices. Theoretical insights from a stylized search-and-matching model illustrate that such indicators can be associated with subsequent...

This paper assesses the predictive power of variables that measure market tightness, such as seller's bargaining power and sale probabilities, on future home prices. Theoretical insights from a stylized search-and-matching model illustrate that such indicators can be associated with subsequent...

This paper computes several indicators of water coverage, quality, and prices in Ecuador's two largest cities: Quito and Guayaquil—both before and after the privatization of water services in Guayaquil. The type of data sources that are used make it possible to specifically control for income...

This paper takes advantage of a rich firm level data set from Ecuador to analyze the effects of a reform in 2007 that introduced imprisonment for tax evasion and made a firm's CFO liable for tax-crimes. Our dataset contains actual tax-return and financial-statement for the universe of...

This paper specifies and estimates a structural model of home seller behavior. The model is an application of search theory to housing and is estimated using method of moments. The estimation method uncovers an analytical closed-form relationship between reduced-form coefficients of hedonic and...

Current explanations for the high rate of default and foreclosure in the U.S. emphasize house price fluctuations and lax lending criteria. Another explanation for default and foreclosure, that has generally been neglected, is fraud. One impediment to identifying and measuring fraud is the lack...

This paper uses administrative data on families that participated in HUD's Section 8 Housing Voucher Program between 1995 and 2002 combined with data from other sources to estimate the differences in attrition rates between families that differ with respect to characteristics of greatest...

This paper uses administrative data on non-elderly, non-disabled households that received HUD rental assistance between 1995 and 2002 combined with data from other sources to estimate the effect of low-income housing programs on their labor earnings and employment. Using longitudinal data to...

Governments provide public information about economic conditions to reduce information imperfections and facilitate efficient allocation of resources. Do households in developing countries rely on public signals to inform themselves about market conditions? To identify the importance of public...